Bálint András Varga: Conversations with Iannis Xenakis (1996)

11 December 2021, dusan

“The music of the Greek-born composer, Iannis Xenakis, has been called brutal and violent. He first studied as an architect, but then turned to composition and put to musical use his knowledge of higher mathematics. In these conversations conducted between 1980 and 1989 he talks about his life and music.”

Publisher Faber and Faber, London, 1996
ISBN 0571179592, 9780571179596
255 pages

Review: Mihu Iliescu (Computer Music Journal, 2000).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF

Christoph Cox, Daniel Warner (eds.): Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (2004/2017)

4 February 2021, dusan

Audio Culture maps the aural and discursive terrain of vanguard music today. Rather than offering a history of contemporary music, the book traces the genealogy of current musical practices and theoretical concerns, drawing lines of connection between recent musical production and earlier moments of sonic experimentation. It aims to foreground the various rewirings of musical composition and performance that have taken place in the past few decades and to provide a critical and theoretical language for this new audio culture.

Via writings by philosophers, cultural theorists, and composers, Audio Culture explores the interconnections among such forms as minimalism, indeterminacy, musique concrète, free improvisation, experimental music, avant-rock, dub reggae, ambient music, hip hop, and techno. Instead of focusing on the putative “crossover” between “high art” and “popular culture,” Audio Culture takes all of these musics as experimental practices on par with, and linked to, one another.

Audio Culture includes writing by some of the most important musical thinkers of the past half-century, among them John Cage, Brian Eno, Glenn Gould, Umberto Eco, Ornette Coleman, Jacques Attali, Simon Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, Paul D. Miller, David Toop, John Zorn, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others. The book is divided into nine thematically-organized sections, each with its own introduction.”

Publisher Continuum, September 2004
Second, revised edition, Bloomsbury, 2017
ISBN 9781501318351, 1501318357
xviii+646 pages

Reviews: Ian Whalley (Computer Music Journal, 2005), Christopher DeLaurenti (eContact!, 2006), Dene Grigar (Leonardo, 2005), Clemens Gresser (Tempo, 2005), Gregory Taylor (Cycling74, 2018).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (updated on 2021-2-6)
EPUB, EPUB (updated on 2021-2-6)

Die Reihe: A Periodical Devoted to Developments in Contemporary Music, 1-8 (1957-1968)

26 July 2017, dusan

Die Reihe was a German-language music journal, edited by Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen between 1955 and 1962. An English edition was published, under the original German title, between 1957 and 1968.

“The journal, whose title means “The Row” or “The Series”, owes its genesis to the founding of the electronic music studio of the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR) in Cologne (later WDR) under the influence of Werner Meyer-Eppler, and the realisation that technology was becoming an important element in the work of younger composers. The contributions from composers working in the studio were frequently based on their projects there, and in the early stages of competing with the radio-play department for resources, Eimert found having such a journal useful. It helped to raise the studio’s educational and academic profile above the entertainment aims of other departments of the radio station, as well as providing opportunities to young authors for publication.”

Contributors include György Ligeti, Mauricio Kagel, John Cage, Pierre Boulez, and others.

Reviews: Dika Newlin (of 1st DE issue, Notes, 1956), Dika Newlin (of 1st EN issue, Notes, 1958), Dika Newlin (of 2nd EN issue, Notes, 1959), Dika Newlin (of 3rd EN issue, Notes, 1960), George Perle (of 3rd EN issue, J Music Theory, 1960), Dika Newlin (of 5th EN issue, Notes, 1962), P.A.E. (of 5th EN issue, Music & Letters, 1962).
Commentary: John Backus, “Die Reihe—A Scientific Evaluation” (Perspectives of New Music, 1962).
Tables of contents of German edition
Wikipedia

Edited by Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz Stockhausen
Publisher Theodore Presser, Bryn Mawr, PA, with Universal Edition, London, 1957-1968.
800 pages

Each of the eight issues was dedicated to a different theme, announced in a subtitle (with links to sections in PDF):
Electronic Music, 1957, vi+62 pp
Anton Webern, 1958, vii+100 pp
Musical Craftsmanship, 1959, 88 pp
Young Composers, 1960, 135 pp
Reports—Analyses, 1961, 121 pp
Speech and Music, 1964, 95 pp
Form—Space, 1964, 87 pp
Retrospective, 1968, 98 pp

All 8 issues in single PDF (17 MB, no OCR)